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Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

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Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#331

Post by tshaddox »

hobs wrote: post #278
nine_k wrote: post #241

The Web started as a document display and delivery framework. Now it has turned into an application delivery framework, which uses the old document-rendering abilities to display the UI, with many quirks and workarounds, because DOM was never intended as a performant dynamic medium. With canvas and WebGL taking more and more, it will turn back into an X terminal, with more advanced network capabilities. If most impor…

You say this like it wont be used to completely remove all user choice and be an utter disaster.

If a developer wants to “remove all user choice” on the web it’s already very easy for them to do that. The only new concern here is that developers will be tempted to use tools/frameworks for unrelated reasons (maybe convenience, cross-platform support, etc.) and those tools/frameworks will just happen to also remove user choice.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#332

Post by justinph »

kyrra wrote: post #172
wlesieutre wrote: post #6

RIP web accessibility when everyone starts doing this to make ad blocking more difficult

(googler, opinions are my own, I know nothing about this project). I will bet that this will ship with accessibility support. If it doesn't, maybe they will launch with it being opt-in, as they flesh out a11y. But if I were to put money on it, it will ship with a11y functionality. The good thing here is that Google already has experience with accessibility on canvas UIs . Flutter, which uses canvas on web[0] and open…

The fact that there isn't a word about accessibility in this blog post is beyond disheartening. I would really like to know how they're doing it. Is it the Accessibility Object Model (which AFAIK, isn't fully baked)? Some shadow DOM thing? Accessibility is a foundational feature of the web. Without it, it is 100% broken.

Its also a bit disheartening to read that someone would consider accessibility an optional thing that could be shipped later.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#334

Post by joelthelion »

kyrra wrote: post #86

(googler, opinions are my own. I know nothing about this project). I really hope this fixes the large-document problem. As someone that has to deal with large specs (1000+ page MS Word documents), Google Docs does a not-so-great job of handling them. I also understand this is why many writers don't like Google Docs to write the entire book in, as things start slowing down when you get into the hundreds-of-pages. I do…

Sounds like your problem is the process that requires you to use 1000-page Word documents, not Google doc performance...

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#335

Post by jcelerier »

zo1 wrote: post #153
chalcolithic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Un)folding a 100+ comment subtree is kind of slow, don't you think?

Tried it with a sub-tree of ~240 comments just now. Less than a second on Firefox. Perfectly usable and acceptable in my opinion. To me there are probably hundreds of more annoying or slower things currently out there on the web that frustrate me.

"Less than a second" is definitely not an acceptable metric for any kind of UI latency. It should be at most a frame FFS, and that means 8 milliseconds on today's screens.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#336

Post by icedchai »

pdkl95 wrote: post #99

Ever since WebAssembly was first introduced, I thought it was obvious[1][2] that the end game for those that want to control the web is sending opaque binary blobs of code that only use the browser for the canvas tag's framebuffer. Font rendering and layout can all easily be accomplished by embedding libraries like freetype. This breaks all forms of user control - like ad blockers - and turns the web back into cable…

We've come full circle. This could've been done decades ago, with Java applets.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#337

Post by ehnto »

dahfizz wrote: post #298
asciimov wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi-hole wont protect you here, they will send the entire page, ads and all as an encrypted binary blob. Decrypting it is illegal, and since the data is coming from a single source Pi-hole can't block it. Pi-hole (and ad-blocking) days are numbered. Hopefully that day is further out than I dread.

Its already possible to have server side rendering bake in ads on web pages, but just about nobody does it. I think the percent of people who know about pi-Hole vs the cost of server side rendering will always make client-side rendering the optimal choice for the people running the websites. They can block adblocking browser extensions, and that will be enough for them.

That's because the ad networks require a level of validation of their views that they prefer to have control over with javascript snippets or pixels.

But it's technically a bit different, since an ad-blocker could still block those baked in advertisements while it's traditional web technology. If it's a binary blob rendered with canvas, that won't be true anymore, which I think was what the parent comment was getting at.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#338

Post by strogonoff »

d-yakovlev wrote: post #316
strogonoff wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VS Code feels performant enough, with its complex functionality IMO exceeding Google Docs, and yet I don't think it is using canvas. I believe it comes down to strategic design that avoids unnecessary layout and reflow events in the UI. That said, the UI of VS Code (the desktop app) only needs to run in Chromium. And generally Google Docs could be a different enough beast that it can’t take advantage of the same tric…

some of VS Code has been canvas-based since 2017 - https://code.visualstudio.com/blogs/2017/10/03/terminal-rend...

I stand corrected, seems like they’re using canvas for at least the integrated terminal and maybe (?) the editor. Makes all the more sense for Google Docs to follow suit. I’m not against apps moving entirely to canvas by the way, as long as the regular non-webapp sites don’t start doing this just because they can.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#339

Post by user-the-name »

falcolas wrote: post #255
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I for one would welcome the death of HTML and CSS. Unfortunately I suspect they will merely be re-used for this.

HTML and CSS are fantastic; when used what they were designed for. Document markup and display. I blame webapp developers for the scope creep and subsequent denigration of a perfectly reasonable set of standards.

CSS has absolutely never been good at what it was designed for.

It is meant to display a document. It took TWENTY YEARS before it got support for showing text in columns, the most basic of basic things in how text is often displayed.

It is only now, after twenty-five years, getting a way to specify the aspect ratio of an element.

It's an awful, awful joke.

Re: Google Docs will now use canvas based rendering

#340

Post by shawnz »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #284
nine_k wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adblock / pihole technical impossibility, too.

Maybe they could bypass it in Chrome, but it wouldn't make it impossible to use for anyone smart enough to set up a pihole.

DNS blocking is way more trivial to bypass than client-side blocking.
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